


Foolishness

by breathedout



Series: Passchendaele ficlets [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambulance Repair, F/F, Not exactly requited or unrequited, Queer Friendship, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 17:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17492273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: Outside Lizerne, Belgium: March 1917.The thing was. About Hazel and Yves.





	Foolishness

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of explanation: the folks over at [Femslash Ficlets](https://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth are hosting a year-long, 15-ficlet challenge where all the prompts are Janelle Monáe lyrics. I'm using them to create a little cycle of exercises using characters from the three established or hinted-at f/f pairings in the original novel I'm working on. So all of these tiny character studies will be related to one another, and all except three of them will be either Louise/Hazel, Rebecca/Katherine, or Emma/Maisie. Anyone interested in getting to know my characters a little bit as I flesh them out is welcome to follow along!
> 
> This story was written for the prompt "You better know what you're fighting for."

The thing was. About Hazel and Yves. 

It wasn't that she didn't like them, not at all; and anyway Louise liked most people. The two of them were kind of their own little business, even if Hazel had pulled her aside to explain—breathless, standing very close, her dark curls pulling out of her bun to frizz around her face—that they weren't _like that_ with each other. Well they were _some_ way with each other, Louise had told her: no getting around it. Wasn't like Louise held that against them, though. She loved attention but generally when you were handed all a person had to offer, they expected to get all of yours back. 

She wiped at her cheek: the slide of motor oil. Repair on Sadie was a bear but it kept her warm at night imagining her dad's face. He'd been horrified enough that she'd welded an ambulance body onto her birthday present, and that was before Petrograd. Before Belgium. Hacking the frame apart again in the mud and the rain to chuck in the new transmission she'd practically had to sell her soul for in the first place, well, Sads was Louise's car, wasn't she. If he'd wanted to hold onto a stake in her more than he'd cared what people thought, then he could've driven her over in person on Louise's twenty-first.

Louise got the front steering bracket loose and went to work on the sidelamps attached to the firewall. She was pretty sure Hazel'd thought Louise meant she did hold it against them, when she'd said she didn't. Nothing Louise could do about that, though, and she couldn't really be fussed to worry. The way she looked; what her father could buy: she had offers enough, in the unit and out of it. Still, she liked her well enough. Hazel.

Yves, too. The two of them ought to get along, probably, Louise and Yves. With Claude and Jimmy and Monroe she felt a—space to breathe, she supposed. Some layer of effort, of watching her words, that could fall away. And even if Yves wasn't exactly black like the four of them he wasn't a white man, either; and he was—not _easy_ to talk with, she thought, carrying the side lamps to the bed of the ambulance for safekeeping. Not _easy_ , because he prickled up fast enough with everyone she'd seen him talk to, even Hazel. Especially Hazel. But Hazel: she knew how to take it, though. He'd start in on one of his rants and she'd smile that kind of private little smile, cracking wise right back at him with her narrow face dimpling up. You wouldn't have even thought she had the extra skin to fit those dimples in but she managed it somehow, for him. Louise liked to watch it when that happened. She couldn't deny it. And that night around the fire it must have shown on her face because everything showed on her face; and also because Hazel had looked over and caught her eye and flushed red, beet-red, and had looked away and then looked back and Louise had still been looking at her and Hazel's lips had parted and just the tip of her tongue had come out to wet her lip; and if Louise had said, _Come back to my tent, I want to show you something_ , she'd have fallen over herself, no doubt about it. She'd probably have crawled in the mud if Louise asked her to: God knew there was enough of it.

But anyway, Louise hadn't said that, or anything like it. Now she got the drive-shaft housing loose from the hogshead, thinking about it like she sometimes did. Hazel's flushing face. Her wiry muscles. If that'd been all there was to it, Louise wouldn't have turned her—

"Louise!" someone called, from behind her. She straightened up, moving her head so she didn't knock her head on the steering column. Then she started to laugh.

"Mikey!" she called back.

Skinny little thing, with a shriveled arm. Toting, through the drizzle, a pack about as big as he was: he did a little mime show for her, pretending to stumble under the weight. 

"Oh, poor baby," she called out, and he swooned: the tragic expiring hero. 

"Canteen in ten," he called out. "Eat with us, why don't you?"

"You go on," she said, waving a hand at her disassembled ambulance, and putting on a voice. "Sadie needs me." So he grumbled but he took off: him and his pack, through the mud; and Louise bent to unbolt the engine mount. Still chuckling over Mike's goofing. 

That was it, she thought. That was the thing, about Hazel. You felt like that kind of—of careless foolishness was missing from her. Just entirely absent: her and Yves both. They got closest when they were together, Louise thought, which is why she so liked—but even then. Even when they were laughing, one at a thing the other had said. She sometimes wondered how they were when it was just the two of them: alone, together, without anyone. Without Louise. 

She shut off the fuel at the tank; then paused, breathing the chill air, hands on her knees. If she had it to do over again, that night with Hazel. 

Well she wouldn't change a thing, of course. Louise wasn't the type. And her mother'd always said she was a great one for foolishness. Without it, her mother always said, seems the girl just can't feel at ease.


End file.
